


Why Pink Geese Are Unacceptable Valentine's Gifts (And Other Cautionary Incidents)

by Selenay



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Assistant Darcy Lewis, Background Darcy Lewis/Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Community: trope_bingo, Humor, M/M, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 04:36:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selenay/pseuds/Selenay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I officially hate Valentine's Day." Clint waved a fork, gesturing at all the pink frilly hearts decorating the deserted SHIELD lunchroom. "It's a cheap gimmick to sell cards and candy."</p><p>Natasha shrugged. "Seems like an expensive gimmick to me. Did you see how much they were charging for those roses?"</p><p>"You mean the roses of uncontrollable lust?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why Pink Geese Are Unacceptable Valentine's Gifts (And Other Cautionary Incidents)

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the Holiday square on my [trope bingo](http://selenay936.tumblr.com/post/39382968348/trope-bingo) card and ended up being pretty much the most ridiculous thing I could think up :-D An anti-Valentine's fic, if you like.

"I officially hate Valentine's Day." Clint waved a fork, gesturing at all the pink frilly hearts decorating the deserted SHIELD lunchroom. "It's a cheap gimmick to sell cards and candy."

Natasha shrugged. "Seems like an expensive gimmick to me. Did you see how much they were charging for those roses?"

"You mean the roses of uncontrollable lust?"

"I went with roofie roses for my report."

"I was trying to be poetic."

"It took two hours to stop the orgy in Brasserie Les Halles," Natasha said tiredly. "Poetic wasn't a priority in my report. Finishing my report before next Valentine's without resorting to polite euphemisms was my main priority."

"And that is a perfect example of why Valentine's Day is the worst holiday of the year," Clint said with another pointed fork wave.

It was nearly midnight so the lunchroom was mostly in darkness apart from the light over the table Clint was sharing with Natasha. There was a large chocolate cake on the table beside them and they were both trying to pretend they weren't planning to eat the entire thing by cutting slices and using little plates and forks. As the cake was already more than a third gone, the pretence wasn't going to last long.

Clint scooped up some frosting and closed his eyes to properly appreciate the chocolate hit. It was the only thing about Valentine's season he appreciated. Suddenly bakeries and confectionaries went out of their way to make the really, really good stuff and even if they then sold it at an insane price, sometimes it was worth the money. This cake was a good example. Rich, chocolaty frosting over fudgy cake with little chips of dark chocolate embedded in the crumb as an extra surprise. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a cake this good. 

"It wasn't all bad today," Natasha said after a while of reverent silence for the perfection in cake form. "The pink geese were cute."

"You and I have very different understandings of 'cute'," Clint said. "Giant carnivorous geese are not _cute_."

"They were pink geese. That's cute."

Clint stabbed viciously at his slice of cake. "That's because you weren't the one on goose containment duty. You got to kick the ass of the guy who made them."

"He didn't need much kicking."

"Seriously, who thinks carnivorous geese are a great Valentine's Day gift?"

"The blood lust was an unintended side effect of the mutation." Natasha took a delicate bite of cake and chewed thoughtfully. "Apparently his ex liked those goose ornaments and she particularly liked the cutesy pink ones. So he tried to make her a herd of real ones, hoping she'd forgive him for cheating on her."

"See, this is why Valentine's Day is stupid. It makes people act like assholes and call it love."

The amused smile Natasha gave him said more than any words could.

"I'm not _that_ bad," Clint said weakly. "I'm not. Right?"

"You've never baked cupcakes that turn people into mindless homicidal rage monsters when you're rejected by the girl or boy of your dreams, so that's a mark in your favour," Natasha said serenely.

That had been lunchtime this year and while it had made a pleasant change from the usual roofie cupcakes, it had been just as painful. Clint was fairly sure he had at least one cracked rib from a particularly furious stockbroker wielding a car door. The rage-cakes (as Stark had named them) had included a strength boost and the removal of any sense of danger.

Between the pre-breakfast pink geese and the lunchtime rage-cakes, it was a miracle that nobody had been killed. A few civilians had been hospitalised and Stark had threatened to kill the cupcake maker because his romantic lunch with Pepper got interrupted, but thankfully there hadn't been any fatalities.

The only small mercy with the roofie roses was that SHIELD had become experts at dealing with similar incidents so they had an entire team of therapists and medics waiting when the calls started to flow in. Those situations could be the nastiest of all, between the injuries inflicted while people were being saved from themselves and their later horror at whatever or whoever they'd done while under the influence.

Clint pushed the memory of the orgy firmly away before he could traumatise himself too badly and said, "The only people who actually like Valentine's Day are the sickeningly cute couples who are still in the honeymoon phase."

"Are you saying you and Coulson aren't still in the honeymoon phase?" Natasha smirked. "The storage closet on the third level would disagree."

"How did you-" Clint broke off and hoped the heat in his face wasn't a blush. "Nat, that's different."

"Oh?"

He shrugged. "At least I'm admitting that we're a thing. You-"

Natasha held up a finger. "No. Don't go there."

It was tempting to push but over the years Clint had learned a few important lessons and not teasing Natasha about relationships she was still in denial over had been a painful one.

Instead he scraped frosting off his plate and looked thoughtfully at the remaining cake. Natasha wordlessly nudged her plate over so he shrugged and cut another couple of slices. It was the most food he'd had in one sitting all day.

"You know where we're making a mistake?" he said after a while.

"I don't see any mistakes here," Natasha said. "We've got cake, nobody is shooting at us or trying to put their hands in our pants, and we're sitting down for the first time in fifteen hours."

"We're sitting in a lunchroom in our workplace."

"Huh."

"We're sitting in a lunchroom in our workplace eating cake instead of sitting on a couch in the Tower eating pizza," Clint continued. "And why are we here?"

Natasha sighed. "We're waiting."

"That's right. We're waiting because we're dating the admin people who are cleaning up the Valentine's Day fuck ups. There's our mistake."

"If I were a less secure man, I'd feel worried about being called a mistake."

Phil's voice sounded tired and hoarse but it still had the power to send a shiver down Clint's spine. He was fairly sure that was never going to stop. Even though they'd been together for a few months now and Natasha had known from the start, Clint still couldn't supress the happy grin whenever Phil publically acknowledged their relationship. There was going to be a time when this all felt normal and every day, but right now Natasha was right. They were still in the honeymoon phase and Clint didn't mind that at all.

He turned to watch Phil and Darcy cross the darkened lunchroom. Considering they had spent most of the day coordinating the SHIELD response from the safety of a car and making food runs whenever there was time, they both looked surprisingly dishevelled. Darcy's clothes were covered with dust, there were smudges of dirt on her nose and she had a dark bruise just below her eye. Natasha's fingers twitched as Darcy approached. Clint recognised the gesture and knew she was fighting not to reach out and touch. Darcy smiled at Natasha and rested a hand on the back of her chair where her fingers would just brush Natasha's shoulder without being too obvious.

"You didn't have to wait," Phil said softly.

His hand on Clint's shoulder was warm and familiar and he smelled of gunpowder and coffee.

"Yeah, I kind of did," Clint said.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Natasha and Darcy were occupied with quietly and unsubtly checking each other for injuries. Phil must have also seen they weren't paying any attention as well because he leaned down and gave Clint a quick kiss.  
Clint reached up and hooked a hand behind his neck for a proper kiss and there was definitely a hint of a smug smile on Phil's lips when it ended.

"That's good cake," Phil said quietly.

"Want me to bring it with us?"

There was a thoughtful look in Phil's eyes and Clint reached out to pull the remaining half of the chocolate cake toward him at the same time as Darcy made a grab for it. There was a short battle of wills before Natasha said something unflattering in Russian and sliced it in half.

"Are we done here now?" she asked.

"We're definitely done," Darcy said firmly. "I hate Valentine's Day. Is it like this every year?"

Clint sighed. "It's like this every year."

"Have you guys considered maybe taking a vacation somewhere warm and completely cut off from all communication next year?"

"They'd find us," Phil said a little mournfully. "Trust me, there's nowhere they wouldn't find us."

"There is one good thing," Natasha said as she stood up.

"Yeah?" Darcy put her half of the cake on a plate licked her fingers with a pleased smile. "What's that?"

Natasha nodded to a nearby clock. "It's after midnight. Valentine's Day is over."

They all paused to consider that. Phil straightened his shoulders and twitched his rumpled, scorched jacket straight.

"I've also put all of us on stand down for the next couple of days," he said with a small smile.

Clint grinned because he could think of a lot of things to do in two days off. "That's almost worth getting eaten by carnivorous pink geese for."

"Almost?" Phil asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I may upgrade my assessment later." Clint let his grin widen a little, ignoring Natasha's pointed eye roll. "Depending."

"That sounds like a challenge."

There was just a hint of something rich and happy in Phil's eyes and Clint leaned in so he could say, too quietly for Natasha to hear, "Maybe it is."

Then he picked up his half of the cake and gestured to the door. "First, I'm sleeping for at least twelve hours and if I never see another pink goose it will be too soon."

"I think they were gan-" Darcy suddenly cut off and then said, louder, "Good plan. Lead on."


End file.
